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Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Slow Heat by Leta Blake (#gay #omega #mpreg)

As the year comes to a close, I find myself looking back at all the stories I somehow never got to, and feeling horribly guilty about it . . . so this week I am tackling the review pile from the bottom, catching up on my oldest reads, and doing my best to celebrate them as they deserve.

Slow Heat is a gay romance, which is not normally my genre of choice, but Leta Blake intrigued me with the idea of an all-male future where there are three genders: alpha, omega, and beta. I find the idea of mpreg stories absolutely fascinating, and the gender issues that come with those pairings is interesting.

On that note, I was genuinely surprised by how Blake explored those genders. I expected the omegas to be effeminate and submissive, but that is not the case. Even when they are in heat, presenting themselves to be mounted, and self-lubricating in anticipation, they are still men. They were not the men I wanted them to be, but I cannot deny their allure, and appreciated the alpha-omega bond.

While this is a sexy story, full of all sorts of taboo kinks (I totally get the appeal of the mpreg genre now), what really fascinated me was the world-building. While it fell flat in a few places (for instance, it felt too contemporary for a female-less future), the way it approached gender roles and sexuality was interesting. You would expect an all-male future to be more liberated, but gender roles here are absolute. Omegas have a duty to carry babies, abortion is a capital crime, and there are rigid rules to be followed in courtship and marriage. It is, in many ways, a very backwards society, and through it Blake forces us to take a good hard look at our own.

I did like the main characters, and found the romance aspects worked beautifully, but I have to be honest - it was my fascination with the omega/mpreg kink that kept me reading. This could very well be a new genre for me. :)

Author of the bestselling book Smoky Mountain Dreams and the fan favorite Training Season, Leta Blake's educational and professional background is in psychology and finance, respectively. However, her passion has always been for writing. She enjoys crafting romance stories and exploring the psyches of made up people. At home in the Southern U.S., Leta works hard at achieving balance between her day job, her writing, and her family.@letablakehttps://letablake.wordpress.com/